Tuesday, March 7, 2017

How to Honeypot the Left

Something I'm noticing about liberals lately is that when judging a statement or action, they don't care what was said, but who said it. That is it. You can argue with them until you're red in the face. It doesn't matter. They have their side, you're on the other side, so nothing gets through.

The only way to deal with this is through ridicule and using their own words against them. For instance, they were quite irate today that Ben Carson compared slaves to immigrants. They said he was basically insane. Then later it was shown that Barack Obama had said nearly the same thing on numerous occasions. This is the perfect response. Not an explanation based in reason, but using their own biases against themselves.

In an adversarial debate your goal is to get the opponent to contradict himself without doing so yourself. If you are in a debate with a liberal, you have a powerful card in your hand: you know his primary motivator.

Liberals are primarily motivated by attacking Donald Trump

It might be that this principle is generally true in that they are primarily motivated by attacking the right, but they are currently consumed with Trump. Absolutely obsessed. So in your argument you can lay some bait, something that gives them a chance to criticize Trump. But it's a trap, because you then can use his logic against him.

For instance, if you knew that both Barack Obama and Ben Carson referred to slaves as immigrants, you could lay Carson out there as bait, let them lecture from a position of moral superiority on the subject, and then counter with Obama. Hopefully it helps with the general argument you are making but it doesn't have to. Anything to get your opponent to contradict himself is a win.

Please comment if you have success or failures with this. I'm just putting this together myself but I hope to try it out a bit and I'll post some case studies if I have any success with it. I've not yet had any outright success because they actually seem to be somewhat adept at sniffing them out. I'm used to them falling right into logical traps, but really those aren't very effective in these kinds of debates, sadly. For that to work the opponent has to be capable of grokking intellectual arguments and of acting in good faith. And if someone fits those requirements, well you likely won't be debating against them to begin with.

To recap:

Liberals only care who said it, not what was said

They can be baited if they think think can attack the right (particularly Trump) from a position of moral superiority